


The Anniversary

by Istezada



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anniversaries, Aziraphale has been demoted, Beginnings of a relationship, Crowley is a lying liar who lies, Don't copy to another site, Drunk!Crowley, Gen, umbrellas: actually evil?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 09:03:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20151079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: In which Crawly is a lying liar who lies and Aziraphale lets him be so, because it's easier than actually having those conversations.





	The Anniversary

“What’s the occasion?” Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at the minor wall of cups that Crawly seemed to be erecting in front of him on the table.

“Whassit to you, Cherub?” The serpent raked long fingers through longer ginger hair before dumping the contents of yet another cup down his throat. A young man, face open with the awe of youth, immediately set down a new cup and filled it with what smelled like excellent beer. Crawly, for his part, carelessly added his empty cup to the pile and almost caused an avalanche of crockery.

Aziraphale winced and looked away, straightening his robe. “Principality.” 

“Y'what?”

“I’m a Principality, Crawly.” All of Heaven knew. He’d forgotten, somehow, that his old… that Crawly wouldn’t know. “I’ve… been demoted.”

Crawly blinked, golden eyes far more focused than they had been a moment before. “You what?” he said again, with completely different intonation. Almost (_almost_) he produced the seemingly effortless commanding tone he'd once had.

Before the Rebellion.

Before he vanished from the Hosts.

Before his wings turned into the lightless, shadow-shedding things they were now.

The remnant and reminder of that voice stung Aziraphale as badly as having to admit to his demotion again. To Crawly, of all beings 

“Siddown." Crawly kicked at the stool opposite him at the table, shoving it out and almost knocking it over.

He really oughtn't. And he didn't want to. This was a bad idea. But a demon drinking _alone_ was an oddity. It was probably his duty to suss out what Crawly was up to. Was he scheming? Was he mourning (demons don't mourn, but never mind that) some particularly good blessing having gone off without a hitch? Was he simply... experimenting?

Aziraphale had done some experimenting and was intimately familiar with the process of getting his corporeal form drunk. He felt it only sensible (and occasionally enjoyable) to experience the things that the humans around him were subject to, the better to understand and guide them. (Within reason—there was no need to experience illness or a hangover more than once a century or so.) What, exactly, Crawly got out of the experience, he had no idea, but it was fascinating to discover that the demon was also capable of getting drunk and willing to do so.

Aziraphale sat and watched as the demon snapped his fingers at the young man who promptly poured a drink for the angel. 

“We’re… I’m sorry, sir,” the boy murmured, “but there’s only a few more cups.”

“’Ve got enough of ‘em, don’t we?” Crawly demanded. “Fill up th’ pitcher and piss off.”

The boy obeyed.

Once the pitcher had been filled from a (really rather astonishingly large) barrel and left on the table, Crawly leaned forward, peering over the top of his wall. “What’s this nonsense, Cherub?”

Oh, yes. This had definitely been a bad idea.

“It’s not nonsense, Crawly,” Aziraphale snapped. “I’ve been demoted.”

“What the Heaven for?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips for such crudity and took a long swallow of his beer.

Crawly eyed him, patient for once in his existence, but Aziraphale… it’s not that he _couldn’t_ meet the demon’s eyes, he just didn’t want to. So he didn’t. Crawly wanted all the details, so it was probably better (holier) to withhold them. Certainly, it was none of Crawly’s business. Not anymore. Not for a long time.

“Wait. For th' _sword_? Y'gave your flaming sword away to the humans an' they demoted you for that? What do Principalities even _do_?”

“I’m on Earth assignment,” Aziraphale admitted slowly. “They just said to stay here and… and...”

“What. ‘Do good’?”

“I’m an _angel_, Crawly. That’s what I do.”

Crawly snorted, the sound as quiet and soft as the bitter quirk to his lips. “To bosses,” he said, and lifted his cup in salute.

If Aziraphale lifted his cup in response and drained it, well… He wasn’t drinking to _Crawly’s_ bosses. Obviously. He was drinking only to his own, who’d had perfectly good reason to demote him. Someone had to make the hard decisions and he’d proven that he was lacking in that faculty. Staying on Earth to try to make up for his mistakes (and find his sword again) was really quite a sensible assignment.

“And you?” the Principality gestured at the small fortification of crockery while he refilled their cups. “What are you doing here?”

“Drinking,” Crawly said blandly.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. ‘Bland’ was not usually a word he associated with the demon. “Clearly.”

Crawly snorted again and almost leaned back in his backless chair before thinking better of it in a hastily aborted flail of long limbs and dark robes. “S’the anniversary, _Cherub_.”

“Principality.”

“M’not calling you that.”

“It’s what I _am_, Crawly.” Aziraphale glared and let just a glimmer of his essence bleed through his corporeal disguise.

The demon actually seemed to flinch for that and subsided into thoughtful silence, studying him. “Nope,” he said finally. “Princi… Prin… nope. M’too drunk. Not even gonna try. Human tongue, see. S’not as… as…” he stuck it out and wiggled it at Aziraphale “… S’too complicated.”

It wasn’t even a _good_ lie.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and gave up, for the time being. “Anniversary of what?” he asked instead, before realizing, with an unfamiliar and sickening pit in his stomach, what time of year it was. Converting Heavenly timelines to Earthly timelines was a little complicated, but there was only one anniversary that fit. And he suddenly wanted something much stronger than the beer in his cup. He had, of course, been there, flaming sword and all.

“Anni...” Crawly stared at him. “Whadya mean, angel? _The_ anniversary.”

Aziraphale grimaced and emptied (and refilled) his cup again. It was the anniversary of the rebellion. More or less. Close enough. As close as could be accounted for on a planet with a twenty-four (and a smidge) hour day/night cycle.

But then, the official position in Heaven was…

“I thought… we thought… you _remember_?”

For several very silent seconds, the demon’s angular face sagged in what looked like shock while he stared at Aziraphale. His eyes, whose irises had been carefully contracted to a more human size, lost their almost-ignorable quality as the molten gold of them spread and engulfed the sclerae.

“What?” he said, very, very softly.

Aziraphale found himself leaning subtly away from the table and forced himself to correct his posture. He was a Principality. Crawly was a demon and what he once had been was irrelevant. Aziraphale shouldn’t be drinking with him in the first place, but he _certainly_ should not, ever, give ground before him.

“What?” he responded, voice as calm and unruffled as he could manage.

Another few seconds passed. And then Crawly laughed a low and amused chuckle and gestured at Aziraphale with his cup. “Now how’m I supposed to forget a Cherub sheltering me from the very first rain with his wings, angel?” he demanded. “I’d just met you and not only had you given away your sword, you didn’t smite me, _and_ you turned yourself into an umbrella.”

“A what?” Aziraphale latched on to the unfamiliar word while his mind scrambled to adjust and convert timelines again.

Crawly waved his empty hand. “Thing I’m cooking up. They’ll be _brilliant_ and pokey. Never mind.”

Anything that a demon thought would be brilliant (and pokey?) was probably a hazard to the well-being of the human race. Aziraphale made a mental note to keep an eye out for these “umbrellas”, if Crawly ever got around to inventing them.

Regardless, the maths didn’t line up. “That’s not for another two months, Crawly,” he objected.

“Pffft. Nonsense, angel. You’ve clearly done your sums wrong.”

Aziraphale huffed. “I have not!”

Crawly pointed one finger at him, not bothering to put down his cup. His eyes were still entirely yellow, apart from the apparently inescapable slit of the venomous snake he was beneath his human form, but recognizable humor crinkled in their corners anyway. “You can’t keep track of _one_ singular, unique, bloody sword, angel. Y’think your grasp of the Celestial to Earthly temporal times table is really that solid?”


End file.
